8 Ways to Read (a Lot) More Books This Year And then last year I surprised myself by reading 50 books. This year I’m on pace for 100. I’ve never felt more creatively alive in all areas of my life. I feel more interesting, I feel like a better father, and my writing output has dramatically increased. Amplifying my reading rate has been the domino that’s tipped over a slew of others. Continued here |
10 Steps to Creating a Data-Driven Culture For many companies, a strong, data-driven culture remains elusive, and data are rarely the universal basis for decision making. Why is it so hard? Our work in a range of industries indicates that the biggest obstacles to creating data-based businesses aren’t technical; they’re cultural. We’ve distilled 10 data commandments to help create and sustain a culture with data at its core: Data-driven culture starts at the (very) top; choose metrics with care – and cunning; don’t pigeonhole your data scientists within silos; fix basic data access issues quickly; quantify uncertainty; make proofs of concept simple and robust; offer specialized training where needed; use analytics to help employees as well as customers; be willing to trade flexibility in programming languages for consistency in the short-term; and get in the habit of explaining analytical choices. Continued here |
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Peloton Bike+ review: The encapsulation of Peloton's mission and dilemma A few years ago, Peloton's stationary exercise bikes experienced a meteoric ascension into the public conversation, with demand rising well beyond the company’s ability to deliver. But this success was directly followed by nosediving sales, stymied interest, and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue loss as the world began recovering from the global pandemic and people headed back to gyms. Continued here |
How one virus can block another Three years into the pandemic, Covid-19 is still going strong, causing wave after wave as case numbers soar, subside, then ascend again. But this past autumn saw something new – or rather, something old: the return of the flu. Plus, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) – a virus that makes few headlines in normal years – ignited in its own surge, creating a "tripledemic". The surges in these old foes were particularly striking because flu and RSV all but disappeared during the first two winters of the pandemic. Even more surprising, one particular version of the flu may have gone extinct during the early Covid-19 pandemic. The World Health Organization's surveillance programme has not definitively detected the B/Yamagata flu strain since March 2020. (Read more from BBC Future about how viruses go extinct.) Continued here |
What makes for a "great" sex life? The unhappiest time in a sex therapist’s office is around Valentine’s Day, says Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz, a professor in the faculty of medicine at the University of Ottawa. “It’s the day where I see the most miserable couples, the most distressed couples,” she says. High pressure and expectations can prove an explosive combination for people already struggling with their sex lives. Sex, it turns out, isn’t as easy or simple as popular culture might lead us to believe. Continued here |
Is there life on our Solar System's icy moons? Extreme places on Earth may hold clues In their attempt to understand how life might thrive on other planets, astrobiologists often travel to the most extreme and inhospitable places on Earth. And when it comes to simulating environmental conditions on icy moons like Jupiter’s Europa and Saturn’s Enceladus, Antarctica is about the closest analog we can get. A new paper led by Alessandro Napoli from the University of Rome, Italy, highlights the rich microbial diversity near Concordia Station, a French-Italian research facility on the Antarctic Plateau, more than 3,000 meters above sea level. Here the average yearly temperature is only -50oC (-58oF), and winter temperatures can drop down to -80oC. Continued here |
How Supergenes Beat the Odds—and Fuel Evolution Thousands of miles from home in the steamy Amazon rain forest in the mid-1800s, the British naturalist Henry Walter Bates had a problem. More than one, really; there were thumb-size biting insects, the ever-present threat of malaria, venomous snakes, and mold and mildew that threatened to overtake his precious specimens before they could be shipped back to England. But the nagging scientific problem that bothered him involved butterflies. Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developÂments and trends in matheÂmatics and the physical and life sciences. Continued here |
Give Yourself a Happiness Boost With These 6 Science-backed Tips It’s one thing to know what makes people happy, but quite another to live a happy life oneself. I didn’t get a true taste of happiness until I quit my decade-long career as a happiness academic, packed all I’d need for many months onto a bicycle, and began meandering my way around the world to Bhutan. For those unfamiliar with Bhutan, it’s a small Himalayan kingdom famed for basing all its national policy decisions on happiness. Continued here |
"Brain-eating" amoeba beaten by old European drug A decades-old drug used to treat urinary tract infections (UTIs) appears to have saved the life of a man infected by the “brain-eating” amoeba — and his case highlights the tremendous potential of a new type of genetic sequencing technology. The patient: In 2021, a 54-year-old man was admitted to a Northern California hospital following a seizure. After an MRI revealed a mass in his brain, he was transferred to the UCSF Medical Center, where the mass was biopsied. Continued here |
30 Years Ago, a Classic Time-loop Comedy Rewrote the Rules of Sci-Fi Few movies achieve the level of instant recognition offered by Groundhog Day. Since its premiere 30 years ago, it’s been regarded as the gold standard of the time loop movie. If we were to explore the movies, TV shows, and parodies it inspired, we’d be here all day. If you somehow need a refresher, Bill Murray is cynical, disgruntled weatherman Phil Connors, who’s once again grudgingly heading out on his annual Groundhog Day assignment to report live at the ceremony in Punxsutawney. Phil openly despises what he sees as a cutesy tradition in an equally saccharine town, which puts him at odds with his charming producer, Rita (Andie McDowell). Phil, of course, soon finds himself trapped in a mysterious time loop, forcing him to relive his most hated holiday over and over again. Continued here |
The Wild Logistics of Rihanna's Super Bowl Halftime Show When you’re the person (at least partially) responsible for Left Shark, you have to think about every possible way Super Bowl audiences watch halftime shows. That’s one of the many things Bruce Rodgers has learned over the 16 years he’s spent as production designer for the mid-game performance during American football’s biggest night. “Never again,” Rodgers laughs when asked if he considered including blue fish dancers for Rihanna’s Super Bowl LVII performance. Instead, the superstar made her comeback performance (it’s Rihanna’s first since the 2018 Grammys) atop seven platforms suspended anywhere from 15 to 60 feet above the field. And while the LED-lit platforms, which were arranged in different positions as the singer moved through hits ranging from “Bitch Better Have My Money” to “Rude Boy,” looked cool as hell, they also served a very practical purpose: They kept her off the grass. Continued here |
How to Get Your To-Do List Done When You're Always in Meetings You keep waiting for the “perfect time” to sit down and knock out your work presentation in one go, but at the end of the day you realize you spent your time in meetings. You may never get your perfect time or ideal day, so start working within the reality that meetings happen — and that you can get important stuff done in between them. Try to break down the big task into bite-sized ones you can fit in between your meetings. You can also try scheduling in your project work time by blocking off a couple hours at a time and trying to stick to that schedule. Once you have that time, you can prioritize which projects you want to work on and in what order. Don’t let meetings keep you from getting those projects done. There’s plenty of time, if you can strategize and prepare for it. Continued here |
8 Ways to Read (a Lot) More Books This Year
And then last year I surprised myself by reading 50 books. This year I’m on pace for 100. I’ve never felt more creatively alive in all areas of my life. I feel more interesting, I feel like a better father, and my writing output has dramatically increased. Amplifying my reading rate has been the domino that’s tipped over a slew of others. Continued here
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